An 18-year-old African-American soldier came into the hospital at the U.S. Army Base in Monolo, Philippines, where 23-year-old Alice Quinlisk was stationed as an Army nurse. The boy had a horrible fever, but Quinlisk worked the night shift, and since all the doctors had gone home, they weren’t allowed to diagnose and provide medicine without a doctor’s permission.

“So I just held him and kept changing his cold washcloths as he struggled through the night,” Quinlisk said. “I remember him saying, ‘You remind me of my mother.’”

Quinlisk, now 89 and living in North Wales, joined the Army as a nurse in 1945 just as World War II was coming to a close. She joined with a friend in her hometown of Punxsutawny, Pa.

The two girls took their nursing boards in Harrisburg and waited to be sent to basic training.

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When her friend was sent before her, Quinlisk wondered what was taking so long to get her own orders.

“I later found out the FBI was investigating me because my parents were born and raised in Germany,” Quinlisk said. “Since I was going to be an officer they wanted to confirm I wasn’t a spy.”

The FBI scoured town for two months questioning friends, neighbors and the workers of the brewery Quinlisk’s father owned — he was a German brewmaster.

Finally, Quinlisk received her orders to report to basic training at the U.S. Army Camp in Lehigh, Va.

After, basic training, they were given arctic gear and Quinlisk thought they were going to Alaska first.

“Then we found ourselves in the Philippines,” Quinlisk said. “Since we were second lieutenants we all had to buy our own warm weather uniforms.”

They spent a few months in Monolo as the U.S. Army closed military hospitals and sent wounded soldiers back to the U.S. Then Quinlisk was sent to Japan with the occupational army.

Stationed at Tachikawa Air Base about 15 miles north of Tokyo, Quinlisk and the other nurses were again put in charge of closing hospitals and sending U.S. soldiers home throughout Japan.

“The first place had these really, really high ceilings and all the nurses were squealing and walking around hunched over to avoid big spiders that kept dropping down,” Quinlisk said.

One night back on base, the men and women were spending time in the community space when someone ran in yelling, “Come quick the barracks are on fire!”

The women’s barracks burnt to the ground that night and Quinlisk believes it was because of the little stoves they all had in their rooms.

“The day before the stoves were filled with gasoline and I remember seeing it carelessly done so there was spilled oil all over the floors throughout the building,” Quinlisk said.

She said, however, it was not a tragic situation because no one was injured and most were able to get their most important belongings out.

One woman was about to get married, and a Japanese woman made her wedding gown and bridesmaid dresses out of the silk the Army’s parachutes were made of.

“The woman’s mother had also sent her dye to dye her dresses,” Quinlisk said. “She was able to save everything because she was on the other side of the building from where the fire started.”

Quinlisk spoke of the beauty of Japan, even though “everything was bombed to pieces.”

“The people were very humble to us,” Quinlisk said. “That’s the Japanese way of doing it.”

After two-and-a-half years of service, Quinlisk was discharged and slowly made the journey back home with about 300 U.S. soldiers stopping in San Francisco, Hawaii, and western towns dotting the United States.

“On the way home we went to a hotel in Hawaii and I remember ordering a drink and sitting on a beach watching the sunset thinking, ‘This is Hawaii at its best,’” Quinlisk said. “We had fun but we worked hard, too.”